Rival and Reach3 Launch Mobile Insights Platform

In Canada, research tech business Rival Technologies and sister company Reach3 Insights have launched a mobile message-based platform, through which brands can access 'focus groups on demand' at scale.

Both companies are part of the Reid Campbell Group, set up two years ago by former Millward Brown Global CEO Eileen Campbell, and Vision Critical founder Andrew Reid and his sister Jennifer. The firms' new Mobile Community insight solution promises to help clients engage and re-engage large numbers of consumer groups, in order to capture predictive quant and contextual qual feedback. Rather than relying on e-mail, the solution reaches participants through messaging and social media apps, allowing companies to use the smartphone's chat, voice and video technologies to uncover insights.

A Mobile Community can be set up in days, with recruitment conducted through social media and other methods, and community members kept engaged through mobile-first surveys that use a mix of conversational language, photos, animated GIFs, and videos in a 'messaging-like' user interface. Through the platform, brands can identify and understand new consumer habits, and hard-to-reach audiences, providing insights into areas such as consumer habits, emotional drivers, and digital user experience.

Reid says feedback from the dozens of mobile communities the companies have launched so far show that a conversational, mobile-first approach is not only faster, but also more effective at uncovering the type of insights companies need to compete. Matt Kleinschmit, CEO and founder of Reach3, adds: 'Business leaders need to continually test and retest their assumptions to understand the emotional and contextual drivers of behavioral change. You can no longer rely on traditional consumer research techniques that are too slow, overly reliant on recall and that ultimately fail to provide the deep experiential insights that drive action'.

Web sites: www.rivaltech.com and www.reach3insights.com .